Stones Unturned (16 page)

"Yes," Baalphegor answered. "But this is not your child." The demon reached down to the figure writhing upon the bed.

"What do you mean? Of course he's mine. His name is Charlie, I named him after my father." She stood at the foot of the bed and reached out to lovingly touch the boy's leg, swaying, eyes roving like a lunatic. The skin wetly sloughed from the leg, and she pulled back her hand in horror.

Baalphegor chuckled, amused by her fear.

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "He's mine."

The demon allowed the claws hidden away beneath the man-flesh to extend, protruding from the ends of his fingers. He reached down and ran the sharp nails over the boy's skin, ripping it, and peeling it away to reveal another skin beneath. "Most definitely mine."

The newly exposed skin was tough, leathery, like that of this world's great reptiles. It glistened wetly in the sunlight streaming in through the windows.

The woman screamed again and hugged herself. Her body seemed to fold in on itself, recoiling in disgust and terror from the thing she'd thought was her child.

"Your human babe was stolen away, replaced with this changeling modeled to look like your very own."

"You did this?" the woman asked, mesmerized by the sight of the young man's new flesh. Again she began to sway, and to whimper.

"I did," Baalphegor replied. "And on many more occasions than just this." He took handfuls of the shedding flesh and threw it down upon the floor. "They were my children — receptacles for a power found only upon this misbegotten world."

The woman was crying now, standing powerless at the foot of the bed. "How is this possible? How could I not know?"

"Come now, woman," the demon berated. "Don't tell me that you didn't sense the child was different."

She nodded, tears streaming down her pathetic face. "Yes, but nothing like this, how could I possibly imagine something like this?"

Baalphegor growled, rolling the demon spawn onto its back. He reached down to his child's chest, the tip of his finger playing with a loosely hanging sack of flesh. It resembled an underdeveloped piece of fruit, withered upon the vine.

"It should be so much larger," Baalphegor said. "Swollen with the juices of humanity." He pinched his claws at the skin where the sack connected to the body, ripping it away.

"What . . . what is it?" the woman asked with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion.

"It is power," the demon said, dangling the small sack from his fingers by its stem of skin. And then he opened his mouth, dropped the growth into his maw, and began to chew.

The experience was immediate, a flow of memories rushing through the demon's body. Baalphegor saw it all, and from what he witnessed he acquired a strength totally foreign to one of his kind. Through the boy's collected humanity, the demon now knew the ways of the human animal as if he'd been born to it, and from this knowledge, came power.

Baalphegor knew his child's life as if he had lived it himself, but he was suddenly enraged by what he knew. As the euphoric sense of strength passed, the demon turned his attention and rage upon the woman.

"You knew that he was different — that his body was changing," he snarled, advancing toward her.

She backed away, shaking her head from side to side.

"And you were just as afraid as he — you encouraged him to take matters into his own hands."

The woman spun around, running toward the door to escape his wrath.

Baalphegor extended his hand. Power coursed through his veins, and the door slammed, refusing to open as the woman frantically tugged on it.

"You knew he would attempt to kill himself."

The woman leaned back against the door, terror etched upon her aged features. "He was as afraid as I was," she screamed in defense. "He was afraid that he was turning into something horrible — something evil."

"He was becoming something beautiful," the demon growled, again wielding his newfound power, lifting the woman up from the floor to hang in the air. Baalphegor watched as she struggled in his grip.

"He . . . he decided to do it on his own," she screamed.

"You provided him with the pills," Baalphegor spat, sickened by the sight of this foul creature. And before he was tortured by the sound of her voice again, he manipulated the magics that held her fast, sending her body rocketing across the room and through the large, plate glass window, to plummet to the street below.

He heard the sounds of a wet impact and screeching brakes as the woman's body landed in the middle of Beacon Street.

It was a death too good for her
, the demon thought, standing over the atrophied body of one of his children. The child continued to twitch and writhe, as if knowing that his sire had returned for him. But this was no longer his spawn; it was nothing more than a shell of what could have been.

Ballphegor reached down, taking the child's face in his hands, wrenching the head savagely to one side. Bone snapped.

A small mercy for us both.

The demon then raised his hand, passing it over the dead body, calling forth a cleansing fire to consume the changeling's remains.

A horde of fat black insects, big as cockroaches, scuttled along the alley behind the Charles Playhouse. Conan Doyle watched expectantly as others crawled down the rear wall of the theater and emerged from the dumpster there. An urge centered in the middle of his chest tugged him forward, and he took a step after the ticks.

"Arthur," Ceridwen said, reaching out for him.

They linked hands, and instantly a dark, summoning magic crackled around their fingers, the residue of the spell they had cast. It would remain until the ticks had been banished back to the pocket, shadow world from which they'd been summoned, or until they'd been destroyed. The hair on his arms stood up as a frisson of static electricity passed over both him and Ceridwen. At night, the magic that pulsed around their hands and created a dark aura around them both appeared black, but Conan Doyle knew it was the same dark cherry as the ticks themselves.

He had summoned the Malachi ticks once before. That time, many years past, he had found the monster he'd sought, but paid the price.

Eve and Squire followed a few feet behind, the vampiress completely silent. The hobgoblin might have been if not for the crinkling of the open bag of potato chips he carried with him. Conan Doyle sighed at the sound, but said nothing. The noise was annoying, but it would not keep them from accomplishing their task.

"Tell me how this is supposed to work again?" Eve asked tartly. Patience had never been her strong suit. Ironic, really. He would have thought an immortal would learn that, if nothing else.

"The Malachi ticks —"

"They're getting fatter," Squire said, around a crunching mouthful of chips. "That's pretty gross."

Eve laughed. "Listen to you. What a candy ass. I'm going to call you Little Mary Sunshine from now on. Oooh, that's gross!"

"Ah, screw."

"Mary."

"Twat."

Conan Doyle winced. "Would you two please stop?"

Eve and Squire both snickered.

"Yes, Dad," the vampire said.

"Seriously, boss," Squire went on, "what is up with those things? They really are disgusting. I know you sort of explained this already, but I confess I wasn't exactly paying attention."

At Conan Doyle's side, he heard Ceridwen laugh softly. He glanced sidelong at her. The cherry red aura that pulsed around them both gave a scarlet cast to her eyes, but amusement danced within them.

"Very funny," he whispered.

"He's charming," said the faerie sorceress.

What frightened Conan Doyle was that he thought Ceridwen was serious. As grave as her demeanor could be at times, Squire's coarse humor provided her with a welcome diversion.

"Let me try to put it as simply as I can," Conan Doyle began.

"That's wise," Eve muttered.

"We summoned the Malachi ticks at the subway station, where the demon murdered those two men," Conan Doyle said quickly, before Squire could muster a retort. "Like bloodhounds, they can follow its scent. More than that, they track the magical residue it leaves behind, absorbing it along the way."

Ceridwen glanced back at Eve and Squire, her pale blue-tinged features almost luminous in the dark. She was far too elegant and ethereal for these surroundings . . . for this world. But she'd chosen to be here with him, and he was grateful.

"That is why, Squire, the ticks are growing fat, as you so deftly phrased it."

"Hear that, Countess Chocula?" Squire muttered to Eve. "I've got a way with words."

"Mary."

Squire punched her arm. "Quit it."

Eve shoved him with such preternatural force that Squire crashed into the wall behind the theater, fell over some trash cans, and sprawled on the ground in a clatter of metal and garbage.

"Lovely," Conan Doyle sighed.

Ceridwen held his hand more tightly to calm him. No one else could have managed it, but her mere presence was enough to soothe him. They followed the Malachi ticks out of the alley and across a parking lot. What a strange sight they must have been. Yet Conan Doyle did not worry about drawing attention in the theater district. There was never any shortage of odd sights in this part of the city. And ordinary humans could not see the ticks, so there was no danger of people running off, screaming in terror at the sight of them.

The hundreds of scuttling black things had begun their existence looking much like scarabs or roaches. Now their backs had swollen to several times their normal size, filling with the stink of magic, like leeches filled with blood.

The trail led across the street and down a narrow side road, only wide enough for a single car. Raucous laughter came from an Irish bar. They received stares from the attendant at another parking lot, a tiny patch of pavement whose owner must have made a lot of money from the theater crowd. The parade of ticks turned down another alley between two apartment buildings. Rats screeched and rustled in the garbage along the alley but did not show themselves.

They feared the ticks.

"Do you smell that?" Eve asked.

Conan Doyle frowned and sniffed at the air. He turned and cast her an inquisitive glance.

"You don't? How can you not? The stink of blood and brimstone. Arthur, you must smell it. It's . . . disgusting."

Eve wrinkled her nose.

"Now who's a girl?" Squire murmured.

"I am a girl, dumb ass." She hissed, baring her fangs.

"It's been all of creation since you were a girl."

Conan Doyle sniffed the air again. He paused to glance at Ceridwen. She only shrugged. Then Conan Doyle felt once more the magical tug of the summoning spell they'd used to call up the Malachi ticks. He and Ceridwen started forward again. They had to follow the ticks, no matter where they went.

Then one of them popped.

The tick burst with a wet noise and sprayed something pink and pasty across the paved alley.

"Ah, hell,
now
I smell it!" Squire said, pinching his nose and backing away as though a skunk had sprayed him. He tossed aside his bag of chips, abandoning them in his quest to keep from vomiting.

"What is that stench?" Eve asked, joining Squire against the alley wall.

Before Conan Doyle could reply a second tick burst, and then another and another in quick succession. The ticks were rupturing and popping. He stared at them in disgust, until Ceridwen yanked him backward, away from them.

"Don't get too close," she said. "There is no telling how you would be affected by demonic energy that's been concentrated like that."

"Oh, this is just so nasty," Squire said, his voice a nasal whine because he continued to pinch his nose. "Bad enough we've got ticks, but ticks exploding with demon spunk . . . that's just wrong."

Conan Doyle bristled and would have shouted at Squire or at least admonished him, except that the hobgoblin was right. The stench of the accumulated demon residue when the ticks exploded made his stomach roil and bile burn up the back of his throat. It took all of his self-control not to bend over and vomit there in the alley.

"Come, Arthur," Ceridwen said.

Quickly, she led him back the way they had come. He felt the tugging of their summoning spell pulling him toward the ticks but forced himself to go away from them. Squire and Eve hurried along ahead of them. They reached the small parking lot across from the Irish bar. The attendant stared at them harder than ever. Eve glared at him, and for a moment Conan Doyle thought she might do something rash.

Then Ceridwen stood up to her full height, and a blue-white light seeped from her eyes, pluming into the air like smoke. The attendant gaped.

"Do you want to keep those eyes?" the Fey princess asked. She spoke softly, but her voice carried like the breeze across to the man.

The attendant went to hide inside his tiny booth, back to them. He did not so much as glance their direction again.

"So much for the exploding ticks, huh?" Squire asked.

Eve slid her hands into the pockets of her long, leather coat. "Are they all destroyed, do you think?"

Conan Doyle studied her. Of the four of them, she might have been the most out of place here. Squire and Ceridwen and Conan Doyle himself were eccentric in appearance, but with her long, lush hair and her makeup so perfect, and dressed in clothes that cost a small fortune, she might have been a model who had just stepped out of a fashion shoot.

The vampiress was a study in contrasts. But he supposed eternal life could do that to a person.

"Yes," he said. "Or they will be momentarily. Even if we attempted to find those that are still following the demon's trail, they'll burst before we ever reach him."

"Guess we need a new plan, huh?" Squire said. Dejected, he sat on the curb and put his chin in his hands. "Wish I hadn't left those chips back there. I'm sure they're totally skunked."

Ceridwen linked arms with Conan Doyle. They seemed always to be touching now, and he relished it. It was as though he could not survive without the little touches, the constant contact.